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Phenom AM2+ in AM2 Board

dr. sarf

dr. sarf

dr. sarf

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Hi all,

This may have been answered somewhere but I can't find any immediate answers. I've an AM2 board, just managed to successfully flash the BIOS to update for Phenom support.

I've read on my mobo's manufacturers website the following:

Gigabyte said:
Note: If you install AMD AM2+ CPU on AM2 motherbord, the system bus speed will downgrade from HT3.0(5200MHz) to HT1.0(2000 MT/s) spec; however, the frequency of AM2+ CPU will not be impacted. Please refer "CPU Support List" for more information.
Click to expand...

Just wondering what that means regards performance drop over a true AM2+ board? Is it significant or hardly noticed?

Thanks
 
Well in performance you won't see the speed you will on an AM2+ board. That's nearly 120% drop just about.
 
Its to do with when it goes idle and how low you can run the cores i beleive when its idle. Read about it somewhere, not possitive though.

:EDIT:

Think i read your quote wrong lol.
 
It isn't much (if any) of a performance hit from the benchmarks and reviews I've seen of people running on AM2 boards. Check over in the AMD section of xtremesystems, there's a few people running Phenoms in their old boards there.

Only comments I've seen is that the bios' that are out at the moment can be a little flaky.
 
I just means that the memory speed is not a full smack....
the memory speed will be the same as the dual core u have now, not the HT3 speed that the core can do.
 
Very small effect, judging from current benchmarks.

You won't have the full HT3 capacity/capability, but the real beneficiaries of that feature are not the current generation of Phenoms.

The performance won't be as good as with a fully fledged AM2+, but the difference is very slight in the real world and even benchmarks.
 
Real world difference isn't much to shout home about.

Although with some overclocking you can bump that HT speed up.

I got my S939 Opteron stable at 3GHz HT (1.0)! :D However it didn't make enough difference in performance to stress it like that so I dropped down to 'just' 2.5GHz. :)
 
Thanks for your input here peeps.
Planning on popping a Phenom in within the next couple weeks, and I'll see how the latest BIOS version handles it.

It'll be overclocked, the other thing I was pondering was whether to swapout the current PC5300 to PC8500 ram on the board to aid in overclocking?
As I seem to hit a ceiling at a 333mhz overclock with my current setup, and I'm sure the mobo is capable of more.
 
dr. sarf said:
Thanks for your input here peeps.
Planning on popping a Phenom in within the next couple weeks, and I'll see how the latest BIOS version handles it.

It'll be overclocked, the other thing I was pondering was whether to swapout the current PC5300 to PC8500 ram on the board to aid in overclocking?
As I seem to hit a ceiling at a 333mhz overclock with my current setup, and I'm sure the mobo is capable of more.
Click to expand...

Is it 2 sticks or 4 sticks?

The two stick 4GB kits are notorious for not going much over their recommended speeds (if at all).
 
That's odd. What are the rated speeds of the sticks? PC5300?

Have you checked the BIOS hasn't defaulted to some stupid divider?
 
Yes mate PC5300.
I wasn't too sure of the divider settings tbh.
Only thing I can see in my BIOS is CPU Ratio settings? (currently set to auto)
Been meaning to read up on what the divider settings do, fancy giving me a quick run down? :(:rolleyes:
 
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It's the ratio between the FSB and the RAM speed. So basically you can set the CPU to 200MHz FSB for example, and use a divider like 2:3 to run the RAM at 300MHz.

Often it's best to just leave it at 1:1 though. You might want to look for a setting just to make sure it is indeed 1:1.
 
CPUZ FSB: DRAM Reports CPU/5, CPU/6, CPU/8or CPU/9, it fluctuates.
Had a dig around BIOS again, can't really seem to find the setting to change this.
 
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